On one of the last days of August 2067, Zachary Alaka‘i pushed a wheelbarrow over the Ford Island Bridge, through the village at the bridge’s end, and into the remnants of the former militia base. With him were another prisoner and a guard; they’d been ordered to pick up meat for the POW rations. Zach had been in Hawai‘i for thirteen months, but this was the first time that he had passed, unblindfolded, into the society that held him captive.
Honolulu was bled dry. There were no young men anywhere. The war had caused massive shortages in food and goods, and the markets and restaurants were shuttered. The natives were neglected and unbathed. Everyone knew that the Americans were coming, and the city seemed to be holding its breath. Teams of keiki and teenagers were shoveling out slit trenches and tearing down buildings to build protection against the fires.
Nick, the other POW, and the guard arrived at Richard’s Meat Market, where their wheelbarrow was filled with horsemeat. As they pushed it back toward Ford, Nick looked up at a building and saw graffiti scrawled over one wall. He walked the wheelbarrow back onto base, wondering what “K? Ha‘aheo” referred to, and why someone would write it on a wall.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~
It was the first winter after the Great K?naka Uprising. An aged police officer trudges through a homestead high in the mountains of Honolulu’s Kap?lama Prefecture, located on the site of the former Kamehameha Schools. The Ministry of Imperial Hawaiian Internment, frustrated at the failure to track down Zachary, was renewing its effort, sending out photographs of and reports on the fugitive to every police chief in the kingdom. Chiefs were under orders to report twice a month on their progress. Police officers conducted searches and interrogations nearly every day. The officer in Kap?lama was part of this effort.
It was around noon when he reached the largest house in the homestead, home to a farmer and his family. Someone answered the door, and the family, thinking he was a Imperial Census official, invited him in. Inside, the policeman found an elderly farmer, the farmer’s wife, and their live-in laborer. As the laborer prepared a plate of kalo and a cup of awa the officer pulled out a photograph of Alaka‘i, dressed in his sergeant’s uniform. Did they recognize the man? None of them did.
The officer left, moving on to a neighbor. He had no idea that the fugitive he was seeking had just been standing right in front of him, holding a plate of kalo.
~  ~  ~  ~  ~
Alaka‘i had come to Kap?lama Prefecture the previous September, after having fled his brother’s home in K?ne‘ohe. Reaching the tight kind community of Kalihi, he’d checked into the Farrington Inn. He chose an alias, Andy Parker, a common name unlikely to attract notice or dwell in anyone’s memory. He had a mustache, which he’d begun growing in the last days of the Uprising. He told people that he was a refugee from Maui whose relatives were all dead, a story that, in postwar Hawai‘i, was as common as white rice. He vowed to live by two things: silence and patience.
Kalihi was a good choice, trafficked by crowds in which Zach could lose himself. But he soon began to think that he’d be better hidden in the prefecture’s mountaneous Kap?lama regions. He met the old farmer and offered himself as a laborer in exchange for room and board. The farmer took him to his home, and Zach settled in as a farmhand.
Each night, lying on a lauhala mat on the farmer’s floor, Zach couldn’t sleep. All over Hawai‘i, cultural-crimes suspects had been captured, and were now imprisoned, awaiting trials. He’d known some of these men. They’d be tried, sentenced, some executed. He was free. On the pages on which he poured out his emotions about his plight, Zach wrote of feeling guilty when he thought of his people. He felt words whisper from his swollen lips. It was a promise thrown at heaven, a promise he had not kept, a promise he had allowed himself to forget until just this instant: If you will save me, I will serve you forever.
  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~
It was the last flashback he would ever have. Zach let go of U‘ilani and turned towards Nicholas. He felt surprisingly alive. He began walking.
“This is it,” said Nick. “Ke Akua has spoken to you.”
Zachary dug out the bible that had been issued to him by the Imperial Armed Forces and mailed home to his mother when he was believed dead. He walked to Kapi‘olani Park, where he and U‘ilani had gone in better days, and where U‘ilani had gone, alone, when he’d been on his benders. He found a spot under a tree, sat down, and began reading.
Resting in the shade and the stillness, Zach felt profound peace. When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him. He was not the worthless, broken, forsaken man that many thought he was. In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. A new being.
Softly, he wept.